Soyuz TMA-12M with new ISS mission crew comprised by Alexander Skvortsov, Oleg Artemyev (Roscosmos) and Stephen Swanson (NASA) was successfully launched from “Gagarin” launchpad of Baikonur spaceport with the help of Soyuz-FG booster.

At 01.26 the spacecraft separated from booster’s third stage and entered near-Earth orbit, the crew felt weightlessness.

Onboard the station the crew will accomplish a wide range of scientific experiments in accordance with the program, work with Russian Progress and European ATV-5, American Orbital-2, Space X-4 and Dragon and Japanese HTV-5 Kounotori cargo vehicles, perform photo and video shooting, keep space blog, during one of the spacewalks the cosmonauts are going to launch Peru miscrosatellite and besides cosmonaut Skvortsov will celebrate his birthday onboard the station for the second time in his life.

The docking of the spacecraft with the ISS was firstly scheduled for 07.04 Moscow time but later it was postponed by 2 days since instead of short 6-hours rendezvous scheme the previous 2-days one will be used.

“No off-nominal situation, the crew feels well”, – Roscosmos representative reported . The docking was postponed due to the fact that onboard computer failed to issue command for Soyuz attitude control jets ignition. This won’t affect the crew members. Spacecraft computers will be rebooted, ballistics specialists recalculate the orbit, and the spacecraft will be oriented to the ISS, thrusters will be ignited and new crew will finally reach the ISS, – the spokesman stated.